Neighbours
by TheBareHashtags
Summary: Squidward's finally had enough (again). And this time, he's cracked.


All the times he'd been tolerable, all the times perhaps he'd actually been quite a nice guy, all the times Spongebob had ever made Squidward almost feel 'happy' to be his neighbour were cast aside once again as he hurled the rock towards Patrick, who caught it and tossed it back from his burly arms with a loud grunt. "Ninety-seven!" Their voices were playful and gruff from the exertion and amusement they found in throwing the rock back and forth, their faces twisted in smiles and cackling laughter. "Ninety-eight!" Squidward sighed and blew softly into his clarinet, the oscillations of the reed giving him some escape from the cacophonous morons outside in their shared yard. "Ninety-nine!" They'd far exceeded the total brain cells they held between them now, and seemed to not be giving up. Again. For the seventeenth time that week, Squidward felt a rising fury from his torso flushing his skin and pulling on his brain as he strained for an answer. And it was only Tuesday.

As Squidward paced his kitchen with a souffle rising in the oven, he hummed along to some of Beethoven's classics while he pondered a final solution to the problematic idiots he lived between. They'd halted all his attempts in the past to move out, run away, or even quit his job in search of something that wasn't Spongebob or Patrick's ridiculous antics. The only quiet time he ever received was when they left the area, but annoyingly enough they loved their habitat and rarely left it, save for when their idiotic adventures landed them in the infirmary. Their pain was poor Squidward's only escape. Perhaps, just maybe their pain should be Squidward's escape. Sure enough, it wasn't the best of things to do but did anybody on the face of the earth actually like them? The majority of Bikini Bottom just saw two noisome fools every time they ran past, and with their string of destructive escapades leaving the town with a less-than-positive view of them, who would care anyway?

With a thunderous crash, the rock shattered Squidward's bedroom window and tore through the canvas of a painting he'd been working on for weeks. That did it. They were going, whether they liked it or not and whether the town cared or not. Running upstairs, the irate Squidward grinned murderously at the rock and picked it up in both tentacles, then took aim at the blundering idiots wallowing in the sand at his door. "Hundred and three's our new record Patrick, but do you think we're ever getting it back now?" Spongebob looked at his pink friend, tone melancholic, when the rock fell from above and scraped the back of Patrick's flabby torso. The rough edge of the rock peeled and ripped away a little of Patrick's skin, grazing his shoulder-blades and bruising his lower back with the thud of a baseball bat striking a hunk of meat. "Ouch! Squidward?!" Patrick's back oozed a little blood and he rubbed against the wound with his hands, smearing the dark red blood around his skin and fraying the edges of some of the grazes. Spongebob was already inside, calling Squidward's name in a mix of curiosity and anger for his injured friend. He found him standing near the windows, high-pitched chortling coming from behind his tentacles, and Squidward snorted through his bulbous nose. Decidedly more irritated then worried, Spongebob discarded his anxiety for Squidward and the aura of fear he emanated and approached.

Roaring with glee, Squidward descended on the poor sponge with a savage fury and wild cackle, his sanity ripped asunder by the endless tomfoolery of Spongebob and Patrick and all sympathy for the morons long gone. The weight of his actions bore Squidward no burden as he tore at the sponge.

Sometime later outside, Patrick returned from his rock with several plasters scattered inaccurately over his back, but they would make do to soothe the stinging of fresh cuts on salty water. "Spongebob?" His voice was bluntly repelled by the ominous atmosphere surrounding Squidward's house, and Patrick looked dully at the broken window and the shards of glass that had rained from it. "I guess I should, uh..." He nudged the door open with a grunt, trailing powdered window specks in behind him. "Squidward? Spongebob?" Patrick trod the stairs with care not to anger the squid any more – after all, he'd thrown the rock. "Squidward, I'm sor..." He got no further before his tongue tied. The demented squid was stood at the opposite end of the room, a silhouette against the windows glaring inward with the setting sun. Spongebob was laid out on a canvas, his body held up by sharp pins through his elbows, wrists, knees and ankles, and a sharpened paintbrush had pierced his body to the left of his tie, pinning him to the painting. "Pat... Pat get out..." His voice was monotone and dulled with blood seeping from the pins, with undertones of high pitched wheezes as he struggled to breathe, the paintbrush in his lung. Patrick approached Squidward gingerly, dumbfounded at the atrocities committed to his friend. With a craft knife in one hand and a cake slice in the other, Squidward turned to Patrick with fury blazing in his eyes and a permanent smile slashed across his face, swinging the blades and opening several wounds across his chest and stomach. "Hey, that's it! No more, Squidward!" Patrick flailed his thick arms at the squid, who danced and howled madly with the enraged bloodlust controlling him. Grabbing a lampstand, Patrick swung at Squidward with huge force, hitting his upper arm with a thud. Squidward dropped the cake slice and his arm went limp, bent in more places than it should – but his expression remained unchanged as he pushed the blade of the craft knife as far out as it would go, batting the lampstand from Patrick's hands. As Patrick's arms flew after the lampstand to catch it or block Squidward's lightning-quick tentacles, the knife carved a crimson waterfall into Patrick's stomach and thick rope-like lengths of entrails tumbled forward as he screamed with fury and agony. Patrick tried to hold his intestines together with one arm and punched blindly at Squidward with the other, his arm thrusting head on into the thin-bladed craft knife.

Patrick picked himself up from the floor, his meaty forearm stinging madly and almost buckling as he tried to bring himself to his feet. "I... dizz... urgh." The blade of the knife had broken and lodged deep between his left hand's knuckles, sticking out a little and fixing his hand in place where it jarred into his wrist-bones. "Feeling any better, Pat?" Squidward turned and bent over, towering over Patrick with a thicker knife in his hands from the kitchen. Turning, Patrick saw the stairs down had been blocked off by a sofa and the windows were boarded by canvases, giving the room an eerie sepia glow. Blood streaked the walls and a pungent, metallic smell flooded the air from the now dismembered Spongebob. His eyes were strewn across the floors in pieces, and Squidward had stretched his skin taut on a frame, then painted in a deep vermillion fluid thick with chunks – produced by a meat grinder next to where Spongebob had been hung up – the word 'NEIGHBOURS' repeatedly. The word covered the walls, and Squidward was coated in the substance. "Come on Patrick, you need to help me paint... you love painting!" Squidward grinned maniacally at the exhausted starfish, thrusting a paintbrush and 'palette' into his hands which took the form of a large shard of bone, possibly cranium, carrying a soggy lump of the paint with the appearance of blood and consistency of mincemeat. Patrick thrust the palette back at Squidward, the paint substance splattering over his shirt, and Squidward scooped some off and chewed a small piece. "Mm-mmm, wonderful stuff!" Pinning Patrick against the wall he had stood near, Squidward pushed the rest of the stuff into his mouth and forced it down Patrick's gullet. "Eat up, pinky!" Squidward's every syllable became more viciously spat out as Patrick shuddered and sobbed in his face.

Bringing a shaking shuddering knee up between Squidward's legs, Patrick pushed forward with all his body weight and forced Squidward first to buckle and then collapse on the floor, where he held him with his legs and hammered away at the squid's head with his fists, clenched so tightly they bled. "You're a... you're a monster, Squidward! An evil, killing monster!" Patrick's words were brought to an abrupt end, as Squidward's smile opened ear to ear below him and he felt a red-hot pain in his back. Ignoring the pain as best he could, Patrick reached for the leg of one of the nearby easels and swung it into Squidward's chest, doing little more than stutter his deranged cackles and twisting the painful weapon in his back. As Patrick beat Squidward's head senseless with his hands, he felt the pain growing stronger and stronger, and he became breathless but continued to rain blows upon the squid, abandoning himself now to the final fulfilment that in death he would end the murderous rampage Squidward had brought on their neighbourhood. After what had felt like years of hammering at that grinning face, Patrick stood and stumbled, kneeling by the wall and observing the squid's battered remains. His face was caved in, blood spilling from his head in rapid bursts and Squidward's final expression one of unfathomable enjoyment, his horrifically violent end satisfying at last his lust for the blood of those he despised. Patrick's vision clouded as he averted his eyes from the horrors around the room, horrors of the mutilated Spongebob and now-dead Squidward, and with a final exertion of pain and sorrow, Patrick wrenched the object from where it was embedded in his back. Blood hissed from within his ribcage as the plughole in his back was opened, arterial bleeding draining his body of whatever was left in it and his guts falling freely again as he let go of them again in shock and horror. Unable to speak of the atrocity with which he was slain, Patrick dropped Spongebob's sharpened spatula and fell flat on his face with a final gurgle in the pool of blood which he slowly added to from his gaping wounds.


End file.
